


Home, Himself

by incendiarydissension



Category: Original Work
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Coming of Age, Fantasy, Gen, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Were-Creatures, it's exactly the year 2000 in this YES they DO chat on AIM, what ever man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-05 07:31:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18361451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incendiarydissension/pseuds/incendiarydissension
Summary: Anyway, Bryce is safe here. No one steps on his toes on purpose or snickers at him from across the cafeteria. No one corners him during recess and sucker-punches him. No one uses words they learned from the internet to make him feel like dirt. No one even seems to notice his presence. There's a saturation of weirdness here, far too much for bored kids to resort to picking on the guy in the pink button-up. And because Joanne asked him to go to school, he figures it won't hurt to stick with it. Avoid getting noticed. Try not to act funny or—orqueerin any way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> importing this from WHAT pad because i can. i just realized i'm on the wrong uh account oh well

Bryce wakes, soaked in sweat and trembling, from a dream that recedes into the fearful shadows of his mind before he can grasp at its details. The quilt is heavy on his body. He grips it in hands that are, for now, human. The clock informs him in segmented red digits that it's 4:43 PM.

It takes him a moment to recall where he is. That's normal by now; for the past two and a half years, he's never woken up in the same place twice. The strange part is the roof over his head, the artificial light bathing the room in yellow, and the sheltered kind of warmth he's come to distrust as fickle and fleeting. The mattress he lies on is lumpy, but still the most comfortable place he's ever slept. The room smells like wood shavings and fresh detergent. From somewhere else, he senses something more enticing—breakfast. A gravelly voice drifts down the hall.

"You're awake? Come eat something."

His stomach leaps, empty and waiting, in response to the words.

Joanne cuts as intimidating a figure as she did yesterday, even without the fur-lined waistcoat and the cutthroat boots. She stands taller than him at 6'2", and under the kitchen light he can see the hard lines of her cheekbones and jaw. She looks like a vaudeville queen from old black-and-white pictures, all fake eyelashes and real smiles before the wide eye of an antique camera. When she'd found him struggling through feet of snow, he hadn't hesitated before coming into her arms. He hasn't told her, but she knows.

There are people you're just meant to find, and she's one of them.

"Eat up, now, honey, or the wind's gonna blow you away." She serves him bacon and eggs on toast that's just the right amount of burnt. A breakfast feels right to him, even though the moon wanes plumply in the blackening sky. "You haven't told me your name."

"Bryce," he mumbles. "Hernandez."

"And what are you doing starving to death in my woods?"

A mouthful of bread is a viable excuse for having no answer. How is he supposed to tell her what he is? How it brought him here?

When he doesn't respond, she folds her arms across her woolen turtleneck. "How old are you?"

"Um..." He isn't being reserved on purpose. Questions just aren't something he's used to, something he trusts. Maybe she's not a cop trying to lock up another homeless kid or a suspicious clerk at a roadside gas station wondering why he's paying for Slim Jims in grubby singles, but she's still an adult, and he's still a transient and a teenager. Sixteen is the age where everyone suspects you of something. Though for him, big, brown, and ungroomed, it started much earlier.

But she doesn't push him, even when he chokes on the answer and nothing comes out. She pulls out the other chair and has a seat. She towers over him, a fortress of a woman, and he watches her discreetly from behind his plate of food. His stomach is closing up after half a piece of toast and a slice of bacon. He thinks one more bite might be too much for him.

"Folks don't usually end up here," she says. "Not on accident. And I'm wondering why you've come so far to end up in Doorway."

Doorway. The name stirs something in him—an ache.

He picks at his food. "I'm just passing through."

Her eyebrows raise. "On your way to...?"

If he knew that, he wouldn't be here in the first place. "Somewhere nice."

Joanne leans back, crosses her legs, stares out the window. Outside is dim and desaturated from feet of freezer-burn snow. Evening flakes hang in the air, suspended in moonlight beneath navy green firs. He left tracks out there last night, tattered boots not designed for the grabbing hands of drifts or the slick of ice. So did she. Navigating the forest so easily, she must be out there every day. Doing what?

When she turns back to him, her eyes are grey. She can't be more than thirty-five, but her lips, her hands—they've seen more than what three decades should hold. "What you're running from isn't gonna stop. Someday you'll tire out, and Bryce, whatever's chasing you... won't."

Bryce can't think of anything to say to that.

"At least stay awhile. Rest and eat," Joanne says. "Before you keep going. Adjust, maybe—a young man shouldn't be traveling at night on his lonesome." Her lips quirk at that, as though she's made some small, private joke.

His instincts should be screaming that this is a trap, but they're dormant in his full, warm belly. Maybe it's because he's been alone for so long. Or maybe it's just the craving for shelter, stability. He twists his hands together in his lap, anxious over the insurmountable remains of the nighttime breakfast.

"I don't want to get in the way."

"Bullshit. I live alone, and I'm hardly here. This house needs someone inside it."

She doesn't say _you need a roof over your head and three square meals in your belly_ , but she must be thinking it. Bryce thinks of mothers. Soft, aging faces and worn denim, freshly cooked meals and being tucked into bed. His eyes burn. He curls his hands into the hem of his shirt. He will not start crying.

"Thank you," he says, and excuses himself from the table.

What does she do if she's rarely in the house? There doesn't seem to be much around here. Some sort of ranger or land surveyor? Somehow, it seems unlikely. It must have been nearly midnight by the time she found him out there, dragged him inside by the scruff of his neck to a bed he had no choice but to collapse in. Is it common, around these parts, for women in furs to patrol after dark?

Bryce has twenty dollars from his last odd job, responding to a Craigslist ad to move some old fellow's couch down a flight of stairs to his recently finished basement. He has a big bag of stale gas station Chex Mix that's half empty, a fabric wallet that contains a few gift cards and a handful of change. He moves his belongings from plastic to tote to pocket depending on their size and number. Right now, they're in an old Balto lunchbox he found on the curb next to someone's trash bins. It's a way to consolidate, to fight for one possession instead of three. He's stowed it under the bed. He stores his second, untouched piece of toast inside the Chex Mix bag.

She's gone when he gets back into the kitchen. There's a note and a trio of twenty-dollar bills on the table.

_At work. Make yourself at home. Buy yourself warm clothes & whatever else you need. Stores close at 6:30. Neighbor (Penny) can drive you to town. J_

He leaves the money on the table, but takes the note. It's 5:46 PM. 

The neighbors live in a similar cabin, crouched and superficially wooden, but insulated for Vermont winters. It's close enough to see from Joanne's porch, but he still tucks himself up into his tattered bomber jacket. The sky is clearer than last night, when clouds had iced out the moon's face entirely. When he knocks on the neighbor's door, it echoes off nearby trees.

"Evenin', Jo—ah." The man who answers the door is stooped, and wears sunglasses despite the gathering dusk. Bryce tries to look modest and unassuming, wondering if it's suspicious to knock on a stranger's door after business hours.

"You a visitor or something?" the neighbor asks.

"Uh... yeah." He holds out the note. "Joanne said you could point me towards town. Uh... are you Penny?"

The man waves the paper away. "What's that, a letter of reference? Don't bother. Can't read it anyway. What's your name, son?"

"Bryce," he stammers.

"Raleigh. Penny's my wife. I'd give you a ride downtown, but she's out right now." Raleigh tilts his head like he's trying to get water out of his ear. "You drive?"

"No." Cars are something other people use to get to important places fast. Cars are what happen when you're going somewhere, not getting away. "Is it close?"

"You could walk," Raleigh says, "but in those rags? Even a blind man could tell you're not ready for the trek." He chuckles at his own joke.

Bryce looks down at his tattered sweatpants, rising inches above his bare ankles. The sneakers that were a hair too big when he got them now bruise his size-thirteen feet. The bomber jacket is designed for looks, not for weather, by local Texans who agree that forty degrees Fahrenheit is the coldest possible temperature on Earth. He shivers in the Vermont winter and wants, suddenly, for someone to understand what he's survived so far, and know that it's near criminal to give up now.

"I walked this far in the snow," he says. "I can make it a little farther."

Raleigh's wrinkles deepen as he smiles. "You're one of Joanne's vagrants, eh? It's due northeast of here, son. Half a mile, maybe. But if they find you buried in a snowdrift, don't say I didn't warn you. You want some coffee before you set off?"

"No, thanks." One of her vagrants. Bryce backs off of the porch. "Thank you for your help."


	2. The Wolf in the Woods

Shivering violently in a wind that rises and bites like an insect, Bryce steps carefully around snowdrifts and wonders how long it'll be before his socks get wet. It's fully dark now, and despite his full day of sleep, he's exhausted from stumping round in circles. The town—Doorway—has proven elusive, even though he's sure he followed Raleigh's directions—half a mile in the direction he most suspected to be northeast, then a slow arc to make sure he hadn't missed it. It feels like he's walked every square foot of this stupid forest. Indeed, as his legs begin trembling, he spots a line of footprints in the snow with his own boots' distinctive tread. He's been going in circles.

He'll follow the moon, then, as he's done for months, ever since leaving New York. Walk in a straight line until he reaches a town—any town—or maybe a road or a river that'll lead him to one. Joanne is kind, but she's a stranger, and Bryce wants anything but to be one of her vagrants.

A squirrel rustles out from the undergrowth and darts in a whirl of fur and claws across his path. Bryce does not quite maintain his composure—he's taken one lunging step in its direction, scaring it up the nearest tree, before he can even think why. His teeth are exposed.

Truthfully, he's still full from eggs and toast. But the cold, coiled, feral creature in him knows it can't complacently expect another meal. It takes opportunities when bare human logic resists. Panting and drawing his foot out of a deep well of snow, Bryce fists his hands inside the pockets of his bomber jacket and knows that it's the only thing that's kept him alive.

Is his snow-soaked foot wet or just freezing cold? He wiggles his toes and finds it numb and painful. Why, if the sky is so clear, does the cold soak deeper than ever into his pores? Bryce has the sudden, frightful thought that if he spends too much time outside, he might never get warm again. He looks up at the moon, who dwindles in the sky. Craters pockmark her delicate face. She reflects twisted silver, the remnants of sunlight. Beauty is a trait evolved to lure in the unsuspecting, and he's fallen prey too many times. He presses on through the trees. It's the sort of stubborn persistence that only comes with the hope that the next hill might be the last.

He walks.

He walks.

He walks himself into a stupor, until all he sees is grey-green-white, until all he feels, smells, and tastes is cold. The only thing that wavers in the nighttime is the occasional call of a bird or the creak of a tree bending over to release a piggyback of snow. They take turns. A twittering. A soft series of pats as bundles of falling snow impact the ground. Over and over. Colder and colder. Something—not a wolf, but something smaller—yowls over the next hill.

...hear me? Bryce?

Dreamily, he wonders how long he's been here, not walking at all but lying in the snow. Legs numb. Sleepy. There are two hands on him, gloves, and instead of green and grey he sees a deep manufactured magenta and hears Joanne's voice. Bryce. Bryce. And instead of feeling-smelling-tasting nothing but snow, there's warmth, exploding on his skin when she cups his bare hand between hers. Warmth becomes a curse, leaking through the numbness to his frightened, shrunken nerves.

He writhes and snarls and lashes with clawlike fingers, manifesting predator teeth and bushels of hackled-up fur, kicking out, but she's too strong and steady and he's dead with cold. He subsides to whimpers, barely half-human in her arms. He succumbs to the warmth.

He wakes up.

The clock reads 10:13 PM. The curtains in his room are drawn shut, and Jolene's eyes peer at him from the armchair in the corner of the room, glinting strangely in the haze of morning. He sees teeth.

"Why'd you go running off, Bryce?" she says, and still doesn't emerge into the lightened part of the room. "You almost froze to death out there."

He responds with a jittering roadbump of syllables, teeth chattering too hard for coherence. "Di-di-di—"

"Honey, I promise I'm not fattening you up to eat you." She chuckles. "Though by now, you'd be a fool not to wonder. We're not like the myths, see. And even if we were, you're one of us. No one finds Doorway by accident."

"I'm s-sorry," he chatters, and he genuinely is. Even though she's scaring him right now. Even though his lungs and lips quiver.

"Sorry for what, honey?"

The nickname leaks warmth. He huddles under the quilt, his eyes fixed on the pinpoints of hers. Human eyes don't reflect light like that.

"You didn't have to drag me back here."

"Kid, if you'd spent the night in that snowdrift, you'd have woken up in Heaven."

"Well," he says, a semblance of wit creeping back to him, "that's sort of the point, isn't it?" And when she stops smiling, he huddles further under the blanket and adds, "I have ways of staying warm."

"The fur."

He stiffens.

So it wasn't his imagination or a sick trick of the cold. It wasn't just numbness combined with exhaustion. He'd transformed, maybe even fully, reacting to the cold and fear. He peers into the darkness, needing to see—is she injured and hiding it? Is she about to attack, to put him down?

"I think I know what you're running from, Bryce," she says, inching forwards as he shrinks back. "Listen. Can you see me? I spent seventy years running from the same thing."

His back is flush to the headboard. He wide-eyes into the shadows. "S-seven..."

Her eyes, her teeth, glint through, and he can see the sharp line of her lipstick against waxen skin.

"It was going around back then, especially in the city. And, sad as it is, no one was ever surprised when another queen disappeared. Sick from needles, frozen to death on the streets. Thrown in jail to rot. Beaten to a pulp. It was easy to disappear and have no one look for you. So when I got bit, I ran. Couldn't stand the thought of going starving mad on one of the girls."

"I..." His voice doesn't fully emerge from his throat. "I don't..."

He remembers the violent thrill of teeth breaking through flesh. Do the other little boys in the neighborhood where he grew up even notice he's gone?

Joanne folds her hands in her lap. In the dark of the room, her fingers look bony, weathered, like an old woman's. "Whatever you are, Bryce, and whatever you're running from, you're safe here. You're a boy. Shouldn't be scampering across the country, searching for something that's already here."

"You're bitten," he manages.

"I am."

But not like him, the brutalizing of flesh. She's like a needlepoint in the darkness. Nocturnal. Anemic.

"You said the—the city."

"New York. That's where we all ended up back then. Everyone thinks New York has what they're looking for, most of all the kids who never belonged anywhere else."

He blinks like window shutters.

"I'm sorry."

"It's alright."

They both look at each other. Outside are night-noises, the sound of trees brushing against one another and shedding piles of snow. The crackle of cold. The breathless wind.

"You'll stay, then," she says, leaning forward still, until the light catches her eyes. He can see the human in them again.

He nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heh


	3. The Boy in the Bonfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> light high school on fire: and thats all i have to say on the matter

Bryce expects as little from high school as he learned to in middle school. In small towns in southwest Texas, at least, chubby boys with round glasses and a penchant for nervous hand-wringing are not welcome in teeming pubescent ecosystems, and they're quickly sought out for elimination. But in Doorway High, whose brick-and-locker hallways seem too sprawling for a town he can cross in fifteen minutes, Bryce is the most boring weirdo of the lot. Most of the kids at least pass as human, but every time he walks the halls, he sees something else bizarre enough to make even the most dedicated bully think twice—the volleyball star whose fingertips glow like they're trying to stifle the beam of a flashlight, or the student body president who disappears into thin air when he's startled, or, once, a blonde boy who keeps forcing people to duck sideways to avoid being sideswept by his huge, folded wings.

Anyway, Bryce is safe here. No one steps on his toes on purpose or snickers at him from across the cafeteria. No one corners him during recess and sucker-punches him. No one uses words they learned from the internet to make him feel like dirt. No one even seems to notice his presence except for the teachers, who note that he's a little old to be just entering high school and ask him if everything's okay at home or tell him to let them know if any of the classwork is too hard. Basically, there's a saturation of weirdness here, far too much for bored kids to resort to picking on him. And because Joanne asked him to go to school, and he needs to do something to make up for all the money and time he's cost her, he figures it won't hurt to keep going. Avoid getting noticed. Try not to act funny or—or queer in any way. 

Late February is when they start American History of the Twentieth Century. The class is divided into ten groups, one for each decade, and assigned Bryce's least favorite type of project—a presentation for the class. Mr. Sanchez, the kind of eternally put-upon teacher whose blonde hair gets grayer every day, gives Bryce the forties. He slaps together a speech on civilian rationing, figures the other two people in his decade will talk about flashy things like the bombs or the Nazis or the Red Scare. 

He gets to class early, riddled with nerves, and lays his papers on his desk so they don't get all sweaty from his fingers. There aren't many people in the room yet. One guy he recognizes from pre-algebra, a girl he's seen but never talked to. And an unfamiliar boy. His desk is pushed into the back corner of the room, trapping him against the wall. He's been assigned the 1900s, and upon entering the room, Sanchez picks him to go first.

He must be one of those guys that thrives on attention, because he seems unfazed by the watchful gazes of his schoolmates. In fact, there's a sort of swagger to his step, the sort of snide self-confidence Bryce has only seen in movies. He carries a tri-fold poster board and a single notecard. As he passes, Bryce catches sight of the earrings that swing from his ears: bright green, in the shape of little Martian men.

At the front of the room, he unfurls the project onto the faded podium. It's a great, blazing eyesore of a thing, with letters in migraine-red and bile-yellow and graphics printed in low-toner black and white. Orange tissue paper, glued to the edges, shoots off it like sparks. It reads:

THE IROQUOIS THEATER FIRE  
(or)  
HOW ARSON BUILT THIS NATION

The classroom snickers.

The presenter steps in front of his poster. He's like no one Bryce has ever seen before, with dark brown skin and a shock of red-orange curls. He's dressed to impress in a wrinkled white button-up and acid-washed jeans. His eyebrows are a Greco-Roman arch over a smirk that could topple nations, and his irises glint sunshine yellow. Bryce can hear Sanchez sigh from his desk just before the presenter plants himself in front of his obscene exclamation point of a poster and bellow,

"Any of you motherfuckers heard of Chicago?"

The class uproars like a match to gasoline.

He launches into the speech with the raucous color of a firework. This is someone who despises boredom and seizes his time in the limelight as an opportunity to banish it from the classroom. It's a performance more than a presentation, and what the speech lacks in substance, he makes up for with sheer enthusiasm. None of it has anything to do with American History of the Twentieth Century. The grin, Bryce notices, never leaves his face.

After thirty seconds of this, Sanchez takes his face out of his hands and stands up. "Excuse me."

"Questions should be saved for the end of the presentation, please," the speaker says, to more laughter from the class.

Unwilling to become the class punching bag, Sanchez folds his arms—sternness in a sweater vest. "Speak to me outside, Beckett. Now."

Beckett abandons his garish poster and lets the teacher usher him out the door. The classroom returns to its conversations. Through the small rectangle of glass inset in the door, Bryce can see the now decommissioned speaker receiving a stern talking-to. He does not seem to be listening. The smile is gone from his face. Now he seems much more like the kind of mulish troublemaker that would be pinned by his desk to the back of a classroom.

Bryce glances back at the isolated little corner. It's several feet removed from the rest of the students. Is that some sort of disciplinary action? Or is it a protective measure...?

He glances back through the little window. His gaze snags directly on Beckett's yellow eyes.

The snide grin returns.

Bryce averts his eyes to his desk, ears burning. Seconds later, the classroom door opens. Two pairs of feet return to their homes—one at the front of the room, one in the back. Beckett has to drag his desk away from the wall in order to sit down.

"Alright," says Sanchez from his reclining office chair. "Who's speaking next?"

Bryce stares at his paper for much longer than he has to, obliterating any chances of further eye contact with the boy behind him, through fifteen minutes of speeches. Something hits the back of his head and lands in the crook between his back and his chair. A crumpled ball of paper.

Dread wells in his stomach. It's the first stages of what he was trying so hard to avoid—he's been noticed. He slowly begins to unravel the paper.

It's a cartoony drawing of a peaked-looking man in a sweater vest using a tissue to wipe his tears. In scratchy handwriting, the drawing is labeled:

MR. HISTORY CAN'T GET A BREAK

Sanchez calls from the front of the room. "Bryce?"

Oh, shit. He's in trouble now. Caught passing notes, or making too much noise crinkling the paper. He looks up, mouth halfway open, not sure whether to formulate an excuse or an apology.

"It's your turn," Sanchez finishes.

"Uh." Bryce snatches up his paper. "Right."

His legs carry him to the podium. ARSON, the poster, is still at the front of the room, leaning against the wall behind him.

"Uh. So in... so in the beginning of World War Two, the allies faced a shortage of supplies that... uh..."

He stares at the paper. They're his own words, but they feel foreign and strange on his tongue. Graphite against white, and his handwriting... do his g's really look like that...?

He clears his throat, fidgets with the collar of his shirt, tugs at his overlong hair. His hands are trembling asphalt under assault by thousands of cars. The class is utterly inattentive. He should not be nervous. There is no reason to be nervous.

At the back of the room, Beckett is sitting with his shoes on his desk, those odd, bright eyes fixated on him.

He looks back down at his paper.

"It's easy to make jokes about it," he says to the podium, "about what soldiers resort to when there's no women around. But what people don't realize is that in the army, homosexuality wasn't a last resort. There were women on the front lines, nurses and snipers and... well, to be honest, some guys just needed a convenient way to explain why they were having sex with other men."

Giggles rise from the class. Bryce glances at Sanchez, who looks like his headache has worsened.

"And being a gay man in the military meant you were part of this huge underground culture. If you're the United States, before the second world war, you don't just let—sodomizers and perverts into your army, 'cause those are the guys who represent your whole country. But starting in 1945, they needed everyone to fight. Women, teenagers, gays. Of course, they would screen you. If you were blind in one eye or you had polio or you looked like a—like a queer, of course they marched you out the—"

"Bryce," says Sanchez. "Outside."

The classroom goes gunshot silent.

Bryce swallows his words and pulls his discarded speech off the podium. Beckett's impassive yellow eyes follow him out of the room.

The hallway is a deadened carcass of grey linoleum.

Bryce stares through the classroom window as Sanchez talks at him. Mortifying. Now he's the one being lectured for—what, bad behavior? His eyes are stinging. How could he, after two months of slipping beneath people's notice, make such a ruckus that he has to be pulled aside for a chat with the teacher?

Sanchez clears his throat. "Bryce. I'd like you to respond, please. I'm going to have to call your parents about this."

In the corner of the room, Beckett catches his eye. 

"Bryce?"

Bryce opens his mouth, wonders what Joanne would have to say about this screw-up, wonders if she's even the parent Sanchez would call.

Beckett rolls his eyes, mouths something Bryce doesn't catch. Bryce frowns at him.

Lips twitching, Beckett leans forwards onto his desk, casually nudges his backpack away with his foot, and snaps his fingers.

FWOOM.

There's a noise so strange Bryce wonders if he imagined it, and the desk bursts into flames.

The school fills with noise. To Bryce's left, Sanchez is grabbing for the door handle. A flood of students spills into the hallway, shouting, calling to one another. The fire alarm chains down throughout the rows of classrooms, all different models and tones bouncing off one another. Sanchez is yelling students' names and ushering everyone back, back towards the emergency exit. Bryce covers his ears and squeezes his eyes shut. The air is filled with the smell of burning.

In the rush of bodies, someone grabs his arm and pulls him. He staggers along, cracking open an eye, and sees Sanchez—shorter than him by inches, and wearing a look of definite unease.

"The soccer field. Meet on the soccer field," he commands, letting Bryce go with a pat on the back. "You too."

"...Jesus, the third fire alarm in a month, you'd have thought they'd've fixed it by now..."

"You didn't know? Someone's been doing it on purpose.... My fucking hero, honestly."

"Seriously? Someone's been arsoning the school?"

He whips around, looking for the source of the word, but the burgeoning flood of high schoolers carries him all the way outside before he breaks free. The dam of thrilled students breaks back into cliques and, released from class a half hour early, heads happily towards the field. Bryce trips along, craning his neck, and wavers on his feet as he spots a head of rusty curls in the crowd.

Shit, shit. He doesn't know how he finds the motivation to plunge back into the throng, but he does, and catches the button-edge of the white-collared sleeve in a fist.

"Arson," he gasps.

The boy's face emerges from the crowd in stages—confusion, recognition. He gently removes Bryce's hand from his sleeve.

"Beck, actually."

Bryce has left his breath behind with the burning desk and the ARSON poster. He stammers.

"Your desk was on fire."

"Yeah. Come on, Sanchez's taking roll."

"How did you get out?"

Beck has his back to the wailing school building and to Bryce. He spreads his hands wide and shrugs. "Walked."

They reach their class, which has arranged itself into a haphazard line for the roll call. Bryce and Beck join the end as Sanchez paces, clipboard in hand.

"Agosto."

"Here."

"Bowen."

"Here."

"Brauer."

"Pree-sent."

Giggles.

"I liked your presentation," Beck whispers. "Queers in the army, eh?"

A hot flush creeps up Bryce's face. That's not what this conversation is about. "It doesn't matter." 

"No, come on, that's a level of fucking with Sanchez I never even thought about. Did you see his face?"

"I..." He presses his lips together. "I still don't understand how you got out."

"Oh. Like this." Beck's eyebrows arch. He holds out a hand. The tips of his dark fingers are engulfed in flickering yellow flames.

"Beckett," Sanchez snaps. "Put that out."

Beck shakes his hand out and shoves it in his pocket with military sharpness. "Yes, sir."

Sanchez's eyes are furious, and they're on Bryce. "Hernandez?"

"Here," Bryce mumbles.

"Boy, is he mad," Beck says, just loud enough for Sanchez to hear. "Bet he didn't think this is how his day would go. Poor Mr. History. Hey. You're new here, right?"

"Yeah."

"From where?"

"Texas."

A snort. "Welcome to bitch-ass cold, dude. Hope you like snow."

Bryce shivers. The down jacket Joanne bought him is inside, draped over the back of his chair. "Fuck snow," he mumbles.

Beck busts up laughing.

"Sadik," says Sanchez with a stare that could fuse steel.

"Present, sir." Mirth dances silently across Beck's face. Bryce ducks his head to hide his own grin. He can't help it—that joy is infectious.

When Sanchez finishes the roll call, they can hear the distant sound of fire engines. Half the class, including Beck, watch the responders intently as they rush into the school. Sanchez and the other teachers are all huddled together with the school administrators. From inches away, Bryce feels Beck shivering violently in the February daytime. Seems illogical—can't he just use fire to warm himself up?

By the time the threat has been neutralized and the fire engines have left, the bell has rung. It's time for Bryce's next class.

"See you tomorrow?" he suggests, timidity making his voice falter.

Beck shrugs. "Wasn't planning on it. But, hey, d'you have AIM?"

"What?"

"Dude. AIM."

Wanting to quell the confusion and amusement emerging on Beck's face, he lies. "Yeah."

"Cool." He fishes in his pocket for an old gum wrapper and a pen, scribbles something down on it, and passes it to Bryce. "Message me."

"Y... yeah. I will."

The combination of letters and numbers on the gum wrapper are nonsensical to him. He folds it carefully and tucks it into his jeans pocket, and when he looks back up, Beck is already heading back inside.

"Joanne?" he mumbles at dinner that night.

She looks up from her scrambled eggs, brushing shower-wet red hair from her forehead. "Mmhm?"

"What's AIM?"

"Oh, honey." She laughs. "Nowadays, you can't be a kid without it."

"What?"

"You finish up your food and I'll take you to the library."


End file.
